Russian Bond girls are brought together in London

A London gallery is hosting an art show featuring James Bond girls by Russian-born artist Arina Orlova. She talked to RBTH about the exhibition.

Russian-born artist
Arina Orlova’s Kills and Kisses, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first
film about the iconic British secret agent James Bond, is currently on display
in London. The
collection, featuring 30 Bond girls (six for every decade), which was inspired
by iconic traditions, is not only a gallery of Bond’s female companions but
also a glance at how the British perception of the beautiful and dangerous has
evolved.

Russia Beyond the Headlines: Arina,
where does the name Kills and Kisses come from?

A. O.: You always find inscriptions on the
gold backdrops of religious icons. I have numbers on my “icons” – the number of
women that each Bond killed (in black) and kissed (in red) for the audience to
compare and draw conclusions about trends in violence against women on screen –
that is what Kills and Kisses stands for. For Bond girls, the number on the
gold backdrop is the year the film was released and it shows changes in the
fashion, in clothing, hairstyles and physiques. We watch girls lose or gain
weight, change their hairstyles and clothing styles. The colour red (the colour
of martyrs in icon-paintings) used in the clothing means that the heroine died
on screen.

A.O.: The books about James Bond were
written during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union
was the main adversary. Soviet Smersh (an acronym for “Death to Spies” in
Russian) is Bond’s arch-enemy in the book series. Smersh tries to do away with Bond; their headquarters is in Leningrad. However, in
the films, Bond thwarts the plans of the Spectre terrorist organisation and
some independent villains in a bid to prevent a war with the USSR. Although
most of the villains represent independent organisations, you can still see the
general hostility towards the Soviet Union. The
second episode, From Russia with Love, featured Tatiana Romanova, the lead
female, while KGB agent Major Anya Amasova (aka Agent XXX) became the first
woman to match Bond’s expertise and skills.

RBTH: Why do you think many of the Bond
girls are Russian?

A.O.: It seems there is a myth that Russian
women are beautiful and dangerous. It is an echo of the Cold War, when the Iron
Curtain fuelled people’s imaginations – it seemed anything might be going on
beyond the curtain. Besides, no woman could ever resist Bond’s charms and the
idea of Russian ladies falling into Bond’s romantic traps must have flattered
the British. It seems this myth still exists. I live abroad and often hear
jokes about Russian spies, the KGB and so on. Trips to Russia are
still perceived as something exotic and foreigners still see us as being
mysterious and dangerous. The recent exposures of Russian spies have just added
fuel to the fire.